About the job

Job summary

This is a National Role

Job description

Do you have a passion for nature and the environment? Do you want to make a real difference and secure significant environmental gains in the present and the future? Do you enjoy working in a team? Can you see yourself advising communities and customers to maximise gains for the Natural Environment?

If this appeals to you, a career at Natural England offers rewarding opportunities to secure environmental improvements and play your part in creating a better future for people and nature.

The priority work Natural England is delivering includes:

· Establishing a Nature Recovery Network to help wildlife thrive;

· Monitoring environmental changes to identify and help reduce the effects of climate change;

· Working with farmers and landowners to develop greener food production methods;

· Advising on plans for new developments to maximise gains for nature, and

· Providing ways for people to better connect with nature, including green social prescribing.

We are the Government’s Adviser for the natural environment, playing a vital role in delivering the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan, an ambitious vision which brings new opportunities to protect and enhance and to achieve real outcomes for the environment.

Find out more about the work of Natural England at www.gov.uk/government/organisations/natural-england 

The Team:

The Evidence Services Team provides scientific and evidence leadership, services and support to help Natural England operate as an evidence-led organisation. The Evidence Services Team is responsible for delivering Natural England’s part of the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA).

The NCEA is a transformative programme to understand the extent, condition and change over time of environmental assets across England's land and water environments, supporting the government’s ambition to improve the environment within a generation. Data will come from earth observation, professional field data collection, citizen science and partner data sets. This role sits within Natural England’s terrestrial NCEA (tNCEA) programme.

Natural England’s tNCEA programme is organised into projects:

1. Mapping and Earth Observation – Spatial data and maps on natural capital to inform national and local decision making and delivery.
2. England Peat Map – Mapping the extent and condition of England’s peatlands.
3. Field Data Collection – Data on habitats, soils, landscapes and species to understand the condition of natural capital assets. Delivery of the England Ecosystem Survey.
4. Citizen Science – Working with citizens and community science to fill gaps, provide local and landscape scale information and engaging the public.
5. Data Engagement and Analysis – Making tNCEA, partner and volunteer data available for analysis, integration, and use. Producing high quality evidence products by analysing and integrating tNCEA data.
6. Programme Management – Managing Natural England’s tNCEA programme.

This role sits within the Data Engagement and Analysis (DEA) team, which delivers data guidance and advice, creates partnerships for data mobilisation, and supports data management and analysis across Natural England’s tNCEA projects.

A key part of this role will be working proactively to support Natural England’s England Ecosystem Survey (EES) team and working with internal and some external stakeholders to understand the project’s data needs and data holdings. EES is one of the principal data collection projects within the tNCEA. The aim of this role will be to overcome barriers to effective data management and sharing to improve access to and effective use of evidence and assist tNCEA projects to produce outputs under the Open Government Licence (OGL).

The demands of the role will be split between providing advice and support to the EES project and developing the systems and capacity to integrate and analyse all the data generated by the tNCEA. The scope of the role may develop and evolve according to the evidence needs.

Key tasks and principal accountabilities:

• Seek to understand the short- and long-term priorities for the England Ecosystem Survey (EES) project and associated data storage, analysis and mobilisation issues, to enable effective planning and problem-solving, working with tNCEA project leads and the wider Defra Group.
• Coordinate the planning, development, and maintenance of a data storage and processing architecture for EES in collaboration with the EES team, Natural England (NE) data architects, and system providers, ensuring this meets NE and stakeholder requirements such as data accessibility and sharing.
• Lead and contribute to aspects of the tNCEA programme of work around the improvement of data quality, quality assurance processes, and data search and discovery, including the development of guidance, tools and training materials for effective data planning, procurement and management.
• Work with colleagues to develop and maintain processes and tools for both day-to-day data management (e.g., data wrangling and quality assurance) and higher-level system and dataset manipulation and management (e.g., data transfers and systems migration).
• Work with colleagues to maintain the standards, guidelines, and infrastructure required to ensure good data governance and production of Open Data products, whilst ensuring NE’s legal duties and responsibilities have been met with regard to metadata, licensing information, Intellectual Property Rights, GDPR and other data protection legislation.

Benefits

Wherever possible Natural England accommodates requests for both full-time and part-time hours and other flexible working patterns to help employees achieve a good work/life balance and maintain their health and wellbeing.

Natural England provides excellent opportunities for career progression, training and development tailored to your role. From induction to ongoing learning and development, everyone in Natural England is supported to develop their skills and capabilities. Everyone has 10 days to devote to personal learning and development, as well as an additional 3 days to volunteer.

You will have access to Civil Service Pension and benefits arrangements and generous leave allowances (33 day per year pro rata), as well as flexible working, to help you achieve a work-life balance that works for you and us.

You will have access to a range of benefits including discounts on shopping vouchers, cycle to work scheme, and childcare vouchers. You can also join the Civil Service Sport club which offer discounts on a range of sports and leisure opportunities as well as social events.

Natural England is a fantastic place to work, where difference is celebrated.

We’re committed to fairness and equality for all, so you feel valued for who you are and what you do. Our shared values help us work together to benefit the communities we serve. Our thriving employee-led diversity networks support our inclusive culture and contribute to our Diversity Action Plan.

Locations

Natural England is adopting hybrid working – which means our staff work from a flexible range of locations, encompassing home, offices (ours and our partners) and relevant sites. All new staff will be formally linked to one of our 25 offices across England and the expectation is that all new staff will be able to access their local office to be part of the community of staff in their geographical area. Full time staff are expected to attend their associated office for a minimum of one day a week.

Staff members are required to carry out all their duties working in this way and cannot do so from an overseas location at any time. Travel expenses will be paid if work related travel is required but does not apply to travel between home and your associated office.

National team roles can be linked with any Natural England office while Area Team roles will be linked with an office in the relevant geographic area. View a map of our office locations here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/natural-england-office-locations

Pay

It is Natural England policy to employ at the entry point of the salary range.

Natural England is undertaking a review of its current Staff Framework to ensure that it continues to be fit for purpose for the future and able to deliver its ambitions as an organisation. It will enable us to attract, retain, and grow our people to deliver our ambitious mission to build partnerships for nature recovery and provide enriching careers for our people. Role responsibilities will not change as a result of the review, but all roles will be assessed against the new Staff Framework and will be aligned to one of the new 3 Job Families (Shaping, Enabling and Delivering).

How to Apply

We welcome and encourage applications from all communities. Natural England is accredited to the Disability Confident Scheme, which denotes organisations which have a positive attitude towards disabled people. Disabled applicants who meet the minimum requirements for the role at the shortlisting stage are guaranteed an invitation to interview.

If you require a reasonable adjustment at interview, or there is anything else you would like the panel to take into consideration, you should notify us of this at application stage where possible, or well in advance of your interview.

This vacancy uses competency-based assessment. We'll assess you against the competencies below during the selection process:

Competence 1 

Professional competency 

Technical skills and knowledge (STAR format not required for this competency) 

Competence 2  

Personal effectiveness – Practitioner 

Competence 3  

Work Delivery – Expert/Practitioner 

When completing the application form you should present relevant examples using the STAR format. Give us an example of how you have demonstrated the competency (which can be work related or from another area of your life) and tell us about the Situation, the specific Task you had to undertake, the specific Actions you took, and the Result (both immediate and in a wider context) of your doing so.

Please note that STAR format is not required when answering the Technical Skills & Knowledge competency.

Examples should be given in no more than 250 words for each competency.

If we receive a significant number of applications, we reserve the right to evaluate applications on the technical skills and knowledge competency only.

If you are successful at the shortlisting stage, you will be invited to attend an interview via MS Teams or a suitable alternative, where you will be asked to give examples for all  competencies as set out in the Job Description.

Successful candidates will be allocated roles in merit order based on scores achieved at interview and in accordance with location preferences, taking into account the work area to which successful candidates are most suited, wherever possible.

Recruitment Framework

Competencies

Competence 1

Professional competency

Technical skills and knowledge (STAR format not required for this competency)

Description

Essential
• Experience of working with a range of data types such as biological data, habitat data, social sciences data and spatial data, in both structured and unstructured formats.
• Experience handling data, such as data cleaning, data transformation, integrating different data types or data from different sources, and moving data between different formats or systems.
• Data management skills and experience of working within data licencing and data standards (e.g. metadata standards, Open Data, GDPR, Intellectual Property Rights, etc.).
• Knowledge and experience of data analysis and manipulation software, such as Excel, including a computer programming language such as R or Python.
• Knowledge and experience of databases, data storage software such as PostgreSQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server, etc., and familiarity with languages such SQL.

Desirable
• Knowledge and experience of the development, implementation and maintenance of data architectures, infrastructure and systems.
• Experience using spatial analysis and software such as desktop ESRI ArcGIS products (e.g. ArcMap, ArcGIS Pro, etc.) or similar alternatives (MapInfo, QGIS, etc.), and ideally managing spatial data in a relational database environment (e.g., using PostGIS).
• Experience with cloud-based tools and infrastructure, e.g., AWS and Microsoft Azure.
• Experience of, and ability to appropriately apply, data analysis, modelling, or statistical techniques, and follow quality assurance processes.
• Experience working with nature-based evidence, such as field surveys, habitat mapping, analysis, land-use/landscape classifications, etc.

Competence 2

Professional competency

Personal effectiveness – Practitioner

Description

• Identify, share and promote best practice and lessons learned to create a culture of learning that supports continuous improvement (Practitioner).
• Act with integrity, addressing challenging issues and managing conflict through being open and objective (Practitioner).

Competence 3

Professional competency

Work Delivery – Expert/Practitioner

Description

• Manage and deliver your work to meet agreed targets and deadlines (Expert).
• Understand and promote compliance with the Evidence Standard, Data Standard and other relevant policy/procedures including quality assurance and peer-review (Practitioner).

Person specification

Please refer to Job Description

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £36,098, Natural England contributes £9,782 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

Please refer to Job Description

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.